Reconcile current contributor and architecture documentation #459

Merged implementation checkpoint — October 27, 2026

PR #461 merged at 645a789e8ce36081287ee032f0f1a72fe160dfce with maintainer authorization. Documentation/source corrections are merged. Documentation structural/link execution remains deferred; #459 remains open. #458 and #419 retain qualification and release ownership.

Tests, builds/compiler checks, lint/format/schema/documentation tooling, native/provider/CLI execution and CI remain unrun under the maintained sprint deferral. No Actions were dispatched or polled. Earlier draft-state notes below are historical; original scope and acceptance criteria are preserved.

Draft source checkpoint — October 26, 2026

Draft PR #461, head fefdc4a11afc3c1f768200762ed62a5099901660, corrects contributor setup/release guidance, source navigation and architecture ownership. Root ARCHITECTURE/SYSTEM are the current conceptual entry, the implementation map stays separate, and older foundation pages retain their content with historical navigation. Draft #455 and #405/#409 boundaries remain explicit.

Source review plus independent setup/release review found no concrete blocker. Published blobs/tree match the local reviewed snapshot. Documentation tooling and all product tests/build/lint/schema/native/CI remain unrun; no Actions were dispatched or polled. This issue and its acceptance criteria remain open.

Checkpoint handoff. Existing scope and history follow unchanged.

Problem and evidence

Current CONTRIBUTING.md:129–236 describes an automatic Bump Version/tag-push release, ten binary targets, package channels and commits to main. The current manual, exact-tag, single-Linux integration-candidate workflow explicitly rejects that process. README and docs/release-candidate.md already describe the newer boundary.

Contributor code navigation still names root src/ despite the three-crate workspace. Root SYSTEM.md gives all seven systems the same generic responsibility text; root foundation docs coexist with the older docs/architecture/foundation/ set without an explicit navigation/migration disposition. This makes it harder to locate the actual owner and source/qualified/released state of planning, composition, creative providers and SDK contracts.

Scope

Reconcile current contributor navigation and release instructions with the actual workspace and release guide. Choose and document the current architecture entry point using the repository's already adopted architecture conventions; label older material historical or superseded with stable links instead of deleting its history. Replace generic system descriptions with bounded responsibilities and evidence pointers. Keep conceptual architecture separate from the code map.

Acceptance criteria

• Contributor setup and source-navigation paths match the three-crate workspace.
• Contributor release guidance points to [Release] Publish the first verified Renderflow integration-candidate release and reconcile distribution truth #419/current release guide and accurately describes the explicit reviewed-tag dispatch and initial verified platform scope; automatic multi-platform/package-channel claims are removed or clearly historical.
• A reader can identify one current architecture entry point, each logical system's ownership and the disposition of the older foundation documents.
• Current vs proposed vs source-authored/unqualified vs published capability statements are explicit; PR Add original Fountain, Trelby and transcript text exports [skip ci] #455 is not described as merged or qualified.
• Documentation-only structural, link and diff checks pass. Product tests/build/schema/provider qualification remain deferred and are not a prerequisite for correcting plain documentation.
• Preserve Backfill repository ADR history and enable continuous decision capture #405's explicit shared-ADR-system scheduling decision and [Audit] Post-roadmap repository, backlog, and Identity audit #409's future post-roadmap audit; do not silently activate new org policy, move every architecture file or create competing agent instructions.

Coverage and dependencies

Ready for bounded documentation work. #419 already owns final release evidence and release-claim reconciliation; link it rather than duplicating publication work. #405 owns ADR policy and #409 owns the later full post-roadmap/Identity audit. This issue covers present contributor/navigation accuracy, which those future checkpoints do not currently make executable as a focused task.

Audit evidence: https://github.com/egohygiene/renderflow/blob/audit/flow-suite-20261021T025401Z/audits/flow-suite-20261021T025401Z.md
Roadmap: #367